Ride the Lightning
by Mousme
Summary: Three years after her father consented to be Castiel's vessel for the second time, Claire goes to find her Uncle Jacob. He thinks it might be because she had nowhere else to go, but he's not sure.


Title: **Ride the Lightning**

Summary: Written as a spectacularly late pinch-hit for **spn_jimmynovak**'s Novakfest, for **twoskeletons**. Three years after her father consented to be Castiel's vessel for the second time, Claire goes to find her Uncle Jacob. He thinks it might be because she had nowhere else to go, but he's not sure.

Characters: Claire, Jacob Glaser, Castiel

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 1,942

Disclaimer: **SPN **and **Stonehenge Apocalypse** have both totally disavowed any knowledge of what I am doing here, and I can't prove otherwise. Phooey.

Warnings: angst, crack, spoilers through 4.20 'The Rapture' and general spoilers for **Stonehenge Apocalypse**.

Neurotic Author's Note #1: Uh, IDEK what to call this. It's angsty cracky fusion fic about angels and vessels and oblique references to robot heads. /o\

Neurotic Author's Note #2: OMG, **twoskeletons**, I am SO LATE with this that I might as well have posted in a different century! I know that I was so behind on this that they gave it to someone else to pinch-hit, and so I really hope that you get two fics out of the deal for being so patient! Also, since it's the day before your birthday, HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAVE SOME ANGSTY NOVAK FARE! \o/

Neurotic Author's Note #3: Totally unbeta'd. All mistakes and wacky syntax are my fault and mine alone.

* * *

It's always 'one of those nights' whenever Jacob comes on the air. He likes to think that it's not true, but if he's honest with himself then the naked truth of the matter is that his radio show attracts only crackpots of various stripes. It's not necessarily a bad thing. After all, Jacob himself is a crackpot of sorts, even if his crackpotism (and if that's not a work, Jacob thinks it really should be) is absolutely 100% based in science.

Tonight's topic is angels. It's not the topic he picked, not the topic he started talking about, but the first caller brought them up and now all of his callers are talking about angels. So, angels it is. Jacob is nothing if not flexible, and his ratings don't exactly allow him to be picky about what his audience chooses to discuss on any given night.

"You're on the air, go ahead caller!" he says, injecting some false enthusiasm into his voice, because at this point, really, he's hoping someone will change the subject or at least say something interesting. He's had it up to there with people going on about sightings and what have you. It's like little grey men.

"Everyone's wrong," states a clear, girlish voice. "Angels need vessels in order to manifest on earth. Otherwise their appearance is too overwhelming for humans."

"Come again?"

"Humans are incapable of understanding the fundamental nature of angels."

"And what's that?" Jacob asks, curious now in spite of himself. The voice is oddly familiar, too.

"They're multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent." The tone is matter-of-fact, as though the answer is simplicity itself, and suddenly Jacob knows where he's heard it before. Not this specific voice, but one closely related to it.

"Claire?"

* * *

She's a whole foot taller than he remembers and wears her hair cut in a bob. The long, loose hairstyle she favoured as a child is gone, as is the easy smile and the personality that was quick to trust. He asks her once about her mother, but she shrugs.

Jacob never made a habit of speaking to his brother Jimmy, even in the days when they still made pro-forma attempts to keep in touch. A card at Christmas and Easter from Jimmy, to which Jacob always made a point of replying on the pagan sabbats, just because he knew it would make Jimmy sputter with indignation. Still, there were sporadic phone calls back and forth, mostly because Claire adored her 'crazy uncle Jake' and to his surprise he found he returned the feelings entirely.

Then Jimmy had some sort of psychotic break, insisted he was talking to an angel, or at least that's what Jacob understood from the last tearful phone call he got from Amelia. Jimmy plunged his hand into a vat of boiling water, and so Amelia sent Claire to stay with him for a week while she took Jimmy to a specialist, tried to get him to see reason. Already Claire was more subdued, worried about her father, about her mother who didn't believe her father when he'd been praying his whole life to be visited by angels.

Claire returned home. After that Jacob sent them a few cheques to keep them afloat until Amelia was able to find work that would let them keep the house. That would keep Claire in school. Amelia and Claire sent him carefully-penned thank you letters on cream-coloured stationary.

It's been three years since he last heard from them when Claire takes a bus to come ring his front doorbell, suitcase in hand.

* * *

"Daddy's dead," she says that first night, and she doesn't cry. "He was killed by a demon. I thought you should know."

He stares at her, but she doesn't look like she's lost her mind. "There's no such thing," he says finally, and she snorts derisively, as though he's the worst kind of idiot.

"That's what Mom said, and look where it got her. I'm going to show you how to salt your doors and windows, because now that I'm here they're probably going to come for me."

"The demons?"

She rests her chin in her hand, elbow propped on her knee. "Or the angels. Castiel promised Daddy he would protect us, but he was lying. I couldn't tell at first, but once you consent you get full access. There's nowhere to hide inside your vessel that your vessel can't discover, did you know that?"

"What happened to your mother, Claire?"

She doesn't meet his eyes. "She didn't put down the salt lines properly."

It only takes a couple of phone calls to confirm that what he'd thought of as a gradual estrangement is in fact far, far worse. Claire didn't cry when she told him his twin brother was dead, but Jacob is a man like any other, and he mourns the loss once she's gone to bed.

When he staggers past the front door later that night to get to the staircase that leads upstairs, something crunches under his feet. He looks down to see that he's stepped right into the middle of a ring of salt.

* * *

Claire has a tattoo just above her right clavicle. Sometimes she wears pretty white sundresses with narrow straps, and the tattoo stands out starkly against her skin. It's a pentacle surrounded by what looks like the rays of the sun, which she explains is to ward off demon possession. He hasn't taken her to a psychiatrist because he doesn't believe in quackery, but he's beginning to wonder about that.

"Sam and Dean showed me."

"Who are Sam and Dean?"

"They're the ones who started the apocalypse."

"There's no apocalypse, Claire."

"That's because they stopped it, too. They're the ones who got Daddy killed, although I suppose it's not really their fault. It was all very indirect. There are forces at play all the time that humans never even know about, you know."

"No, I didn't know that."

"I guess you wouldn't."

* * *

Jacob makes an abortive attempt to enroll Claire in school. She's still at the age where she needs to be educated, he thinks. She goes, but a week later he's called in because she was caught on her knees in the janitor's closet with Donald Sedgwick, who's already had to redo his senior year twice. Donald is a lot more embarrassed at being caught with his pants around his ankles than she is.

"Look, it's not that I don't want you to have sex if that's what you want, and in whatever guise you want, for that matter," he flaps a hand a little helplessly as he drives her home. She's staring out the window, arms folded across her stomach. It's not a defensive gesture so much as an indifferent one, her face impassive. "I just want you to exercise better judgment about it. Not on school grounds, and maybe pick someone better than Donald Sedgwick, for one thing. For another, use protection. God only knows where our friend Don has been shoving his willy."

"God doesn't pay attention to that sort of thing," she informs him, still staring at the houses going by, row upon row of brown, blurring into the background. "But I take your point."

"I'm glad one of us understands what's going on," he mutters.

* * *

One day Jacob steps outside his house to find her talking to her father, dressed in that stupid rumpled trenchcoat he always loved and his best Sunday suit. He stops in his tracks, aware that his mouth is hanging open stupidly, but Claire doesn't seem all that happy. Jimmy raises his hand, places it on her head in a gesture oddly reminiscent of benediction, and she stares at the ground. A tear splashes into the dust at her feet, making a perfect circle there, dark against the pale brown dirt.

"I miss you more than I miss him," she says quietly, "and it's wrong. Things were simpler when we were together. You don't even know all the things I've done, not anymore."

"No," Jimmy says, but it's not Jimmy's voice at all, deeper and more solemn than Jimmy ever was. "But then, neither do you know what I have done."

She looks up, and her eyes are dry now. "Would you take me back?"

He shakes his head. "I have broken too many promises already. I came only to make sure that you were well. I can't give you your father back, not even as an exchange."

"I know that. That's not what I'm asking for."

"I know what you're asking for. It's not in me to give it to you. I have seen your father, and he is happy. He's waiting for you. They both are."

"How long will they have to wait?"

"Time has no meaning there. I don't have to explain it to you."

She shrugs.

"I had to ask."

"For what it's worth, I miss you too."

She smiles at that, though it's watery. "Hey, Castiel…"

"Yes?"

"It's been five years. You should really get Dean to buy you some new clothes."

To Jacob's surprise, Jimmy smiles at that, though it's nothing like how he used to smile. Still, it's a good expression on him, mingling surprise and amusement and love all together. Jacob clears his throat.

"Jimmy?"

His brother turns to him, and if ever there was a doubt in his mind that this might be Jimmy, it's gone now. Jimmy's eyes were never quite that blue, never quite that deep or stark or terrifying. These aren't the eyes of a human, Jacob knows this the way he knows his heart is still beating. When he looks too long at this creature, he gets the impression of a huge shadow looming over them, more enormous even than most of the high rise buildings downtown.

"Jimmy has been gone a long time. I am sorry for your loss."

And, God help him, Jacob believes him.

* * *

"You're on the air, caller. What have you got for us?"

"Yeah, my question is for your guest tonight. What's the deal with angels possessing people?"

Claire is a natural behind the microphone. "I don't understand your question, caller. Is it that you don't understand the concept, or that you simply don't believe it? Either way, I don't know that I can provide you with a satisfactory answer."

"They're angels, aren't they? Why can't they just come in whatever form they want?"

"Presumably because someone made them so they couldn't."

"You mean God, little girl?"

"Who else would bother spending time making angels?"

"Okay," Jacob breaks in. "We're going to go to the next caller, since we've already covered this ground extensively already tonight. How about we hear from some of our colleagues on the East Coast who have been monitoring some especially dubious electromagnetic activity. Go ahead, you're on the air…"

* * *

"It's not a robot head," Claire tells him serenely one afternoon, out of the blue.

They're in the park, and he's not pushing her on the swing, because she's fifteen years old and too old for that, for all that when she used to visit it was her favourite thing ever.

"How do you know?" he challenges her.

She gives him a flat, knowing look.

He shivers, doesn't press the point.


End file.
